Equilibrium Architecture in Multi-Battle Contests with Count-Dependent Prizes

Zhonghong Kuang and Jingfeng Lu

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Abstract: Two contestants with possibly different marginal costs compete across identical battlefields governed by a Tullock technology with discriminatory power at most one. A symmetric schedule divides a fixed prize according to the number of victories. Allowing for inactivity, unequal efforts across battlefields, and arbitrary mixed strategies, we prove the existence and uniformity of equilibrium. Equilibrium may be pure, semi-pure (one contestant mixes), or two-sided mixed; in a two-sided mixed equilibrium, each contestant uses at most countably many positive effort levels. Multiple equilibria with different structures can coexist while generating the same expected effort, prize share, cost, and payoff. For every admissible schedule and cost ratio, equilibrium is unique with six or fewer battlefields, whereas seven first permits multiplicity or two-sided mixing. We also characterize all equilibria under majority rule.

Date: 2026-09, Revised 2026-09
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